SUMMER GUIDE

Bat fight: Will Sex and the City beat out other summer premieres?

Film Roundup

This blockbuster season features familiar characters.

by Sean Burns

Summer’s here, which of course means blockbuster season is back. Yes, it’s time once again for overhyped, overbudget sequels and remakes, plus some widescreen blowups of TV shows you didn’t really like all that much to begin with. Here’s a handy overview of what appear to be the season’s heaviest hitters. With any luck some of them might even turn out to be worthwhile.

Sex and the City: HBO’s long- running ode to obsessive brand-name materialism and unchecked narcissism finally infects the big screen. Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis and Kim Cattrall are all back together (it’s not like these ladies had any other pressing career options) drinking cosmos, talking curiously like gay men, and generally embodying everything that’s shallow and wretched in our modern society. Story details are being kept top secret, but my guess is that writer/director Michael Patrick King will finally reveal that this whole phenomenon has been an elaborate prank, and the character of Carrie Bradshaw was always intended as a chilling portrait of a self-obsessed sociopath. (May 30)

The Happening: Anecdotal evidence: Every time I’ve seen this movie’s trailer, the audience has booed. Loudly. Maybe M. Night Shyamalan hasn’t given us all enough time to recover from his spectacularly awful Lady in the Water, but for all I know people are still pissed about The Village. A shame, as for months I’ve been hearing nothing but great things about the screenplay for this creepy-crawly environmentally conscious horror flick that stars Mark Wahlberg as a science teacher and I presume contains at least one big shocking twist. Even Shyamalan’s stupidest movies are extremely well-directed, so here’s hoping he’s recovered his common sense. (June 13)

The Incredible Hulk: Pretending Ang Lee’s deliriously wrongheaded psychedelic take on the original green monster never happened, the folks at Marvel Studios have gone into full reboot mode, starting from scratch with a low-maintenance director (Louis Leterrier of Transporter semi-fame), getting rid of those wacky artsy-fartsy flourishes and casting Edward Norton as Bruce Banner. You won’t like him when he’s angry, something that holds true for both the character and the actor. As usual, Norton has thrown another embarrassingly public hissyfit, battling his way through postproduction claiming he deserves credit for everything from the screenplay to the catering. Any guesses who will play Banner next time around? (June 13)

The Love Guru: Because Mike Myers still thinks there’s absolutely nothing funnier than the ’60s, the needy comedian vamps it up as a lovey-dovey self-help guru who leaves an ashram in India to work on the relationship problems of star players from the Toronto Maple Leafs. Due to loopholes in Congress’ recent bill outlawing torture, the film’s repulsively unfunny trailer is currently being shown to Gitmo detainees during interrogation, prompting prisoners to request that we bring back waterboarding. (June 20)

WALL-E: The genius folks at Pixar return with this futuristic, dialogue-free tale of a trash-collecting robot on an uninhabitable Earth. A computer-animated children’s adventure without any annoying celebrity voices? Count me in. (June 27)

Hancock: Will Smith reclaims his Fourth of July weekend slot, this time starring as a washed-up, alcoholic superhero who hires a publicist (Jason Bateman) to help him get back into the crime-fighting game. Working from a notoriously raunchy unproduced 1996 screenplay by Vincent Ngo, the flick was originally titled Tonight, He Comes, presumably in reference to our glandularly advanced hero’s inability to have an orgasm without causing grievous bodily harm to his partner. Even after countless rewrites, tussles with the ratings board continue, as Smith and director Peter Berg seem stuck trying to figure out how much they can get away with in a mega-budget Independence Day blockbuster. Could be great, could be My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Either way, I’m fascinated. (July 2)

The Dark Knight: This is the big one, folks. Early clips of Heath Ledger’s terrifying swan song as the Joker have already erased any bad memories of Jack Nicholson’s hambone scenery chewing, and all early markers indicate that director Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to the unexpectedly awesome Batman Begins is going to be bigger, longer and one seriously dark knight indeed. Christian Bale is back in the batsuit, along with Gary Oldman, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, and newcomer Aaron Eckhart joins the cast as doomed DA Harvey Dent. Even better: The first film’s bum note Katie Holmes has been replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal. My inner fanboy drools in anticipation. (July 18)

The X-Files: I Want to Believe: Could somebody explain to these folks that it’s 2008? Six years after sputtering off the air in ignominy, and a full decade after that highly touted big-screen adventure Fight the Future offered up a whole bunch of nothing at all, David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson’s Dana Scully have found their way out of Sci Fi Channel reruns for yet another shadowy paranormal conspiracy. Maybe this is a shot at redemption for series creator Chris Carter, as few pockets of fandom can rival disgruntled X-philes when it comes to bitterness. Does this mean we can look forward to a Lost movie in 2017? (July 25)

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: Because folks disappointed by the fourth Indiana Jones film might look a little kinder on it after seeing yet another cheap Indy knock-off starring Brendan Fraser. Also, the title is even clumsier than The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which is something of an accomplishment. (Aug. 1)

Pineapple Express: The Apatow Factory’s Freaks and Geeks reunions continue, this time with James Franco and Seth Rogen starring as stoners on the run from crooked cops in a lowbrow 1980s throwback smash-’em-up car chase comedy, improbably directed by arthouse boy wonder David Gordon Green. In a recent interview the director assured me, “It’s more Tango & Cash than Rush Hour 3.” (Aug. 8)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: This extended pilot for an animated series on the Cartoon Network allegedly takes place in between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, chronicling the eponymous conflict we all mistakenly assumed was going to be the focus of those damn prequels in the first place. Sigh, here we go again. (Aug. 15)